Overview
Job Title: Principal Architect - Modernisation & Transformation
Contract Type: Permanent
Location: Edinburgh OR Alderley Park (Wilmslow)
Working style: Hybrid 50% from home / 50% office based
As a Principal Architect, you will be at the forefront of transforming our technology estate while maintaining the stability and trust that our members expect. You will play a key role in modernising our legacy platforms, ensuring that architectural decisions are aligned with long-term member value, regulatory requirements, and responsible digital transformation.
The ideal candidate will have proven experience establishing architectural governance and a thorough understanding of best in breed technology options and vendors. You will have extensive experience working across complex matrix organisations and will be hungry to continually improve and adapt in a fast-paced environment.
The Principal Architect will be aligned to business areas and Technology Platforms across Pensions, Protection, Long Term Savings, Long Standing Customers, Infrastructure and Cloud Technologies, and Operational Data.
If you are passionate about cloud technologies and want to make a real impact within a forward-thinking company, we want to hear from you. Come on board and help us shape the future of financial services.
Key Responsibilities
Architecture Leadership: Define and drive the evolution of our technology estate, balancing long-term modernisation with immediate business needs.
Monolith to Microservices Transition: Assess and decompose legacy monolithic applications, applying Domain-Driven Design (DDD), event-driven architectures, and modern architectural patterns to enable a transition to microservices-based solutions.
Sustainable Cloud Adoption: Define and execute a pragmatic modernisation strategy, ensuring a responsible transition from legacy mainframe-based systems to cloud-native, scalable architectures (Microsoft Azure and AWS currently). Lead the transition of on-premises workloads to the Cloud, leveraging appropriate migration patterns (e.g., rehost, refactor, rearchitect).
Data and Integration driven: Consider integration opportunities and approaches, adopting event-driven architectures, APIs, and messaging patterns to improve interoperability across platforms.
Architecture Standards & Governance: Establish clear architectural guardrails that balance innovation with risk mitigation. Working with the leadership and peers to enforce frameworks, guardrails, and best practices to ensure consistency across domains.
Collaboration & Coaching: Work closely with engineering teams to translate architecture into deployable solutions, educating colleagues and stakeholders.
Stakeholder Engagement: Partner with business and Technology leadership, risk & compliance teams to align technical roadmaps with organisational priorities to ensure that modernization efforts are business-aligned and value-driven.
Member-Focused Architecture: Ensure that architectural decisions support operational resilience, regulatory compliance, and long-term member benefits.
Legacy & Modern Integration: Guide the organisation through the evolution from monolithic applications towards modern, API-led, event-driven architectures.
What you will bring to the role
Proven experience in enterprise or solution architecture within regulated industries, preferably financial services, pensions, or protection.
Deep knowledge of mainframe modernization and migration strategies.
Expertise in cloud architectures (Microsoft Azure, AWS, GCP), including compute, storage, distribution and orchestration
Strong understanding of microservices architectures, domain-driven design, event-driven systems, and API-led integration.
Knowledge of architectural frameworks (TOGAF, Zachman, C4 modelling).
Experience in defining and implementing architecture governance in complex environments.
Excellent communication skills, able to lead business and technical discussions effectively.
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